


Indelible

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: smallfandombang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6475945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indelible

**Author's Note:**

> written for smallfandombang

“Hello?” Connie rattled the ice in her whiskey glass alertingly. “This is Earth calling McClane. Come in, McClane.” 

John squinted his eyes, blocking out the distraction. There was somebody outside the window next to their booth, standing under the awning, taking shelter from the rain. 

“We were supposed to be going over that new Horse-Carriage Hijacker case…” 

Somebody with a lean frame and familiar awkward posture. Somebody with shaggy dark hair. 

“ _Matt_?” The muttered syllable was out before John realized he had spoken.

“…And I’m talking to myself over here.” Connie put her glass down, and followed John’s gaze.

“That’s the kid,” John murmured. He could hear the touch of disbelief in his voice, as if the odds of two people living and working in the same city should have never allowed for this kind of coincidence. “The kid I did the Gabriel case with. That crazy Fire Sale thing, remember that?”

“Oh, you mean the kid who saved your life?” Connie asked innocently. “And your daughter’s life? Who you then forbid from dating said daughter, and abandoned in a hospital in Washington with a metal pin and two plates in his leg, without even finding out if he had some place to go home to?” Sure, that about summed it up. “That kid?”

“Yeah,” John said drily, his eyes still out on the street, still on Matt. “That one.”

He hadn’t exactly needed the reminder. It wasn’t as if John had forgotten about Matt, or the day they met. Though sometimes maybe he wished he could. 

It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him. 

John had met his share of people under intense circumstances before, sure. It came with the line of work. But nobody before or since Matt had heard the kind of things John had confided that day. Little things about his marriage and his family life, the choices he had made. The regrets. Maybe it was just the situation; the short, crazy bursts of life-threatening action Gabriel had thrown their way, intercut with long, quiet drives in the car, with nothing to do except fight over the radio. But if John was honest with himself, that probably wasn’t the whole explanation. 

On those nights – when he wandered the apartment amid the ghosts of smug terrorist telephone voices and remembered gunfire until he gave in and sat down to try to block out the phantom ringing in his ears with re-heated TV dinner leftovers and late night classic movies – there were certain memories he could never seem to shake. Lately, that memory was the one of Matt, all shaky hands and young, wide eyes asking _Have you done stuff like that before? …Like killing people?_

Matt had a vulnerability that was contagious. Those big, guileless eyes and honest questions made John feel guilty somehow, jaded. Holly had accused him time and time again of being closed off, of shutting down too much. It wasn’t news that the years spent doing what he had to had changed him, but meeting somebody like Matt made John feel almost like it made him some kind of monster. Meeting a guy like Matt made it seem for the first time like it was sort of part of his duty. To try and be more human. 

But it turned out picking up the phone and doing it was scary as shit. 

So Kowalski’s guilt trip was a wasted effort. John knew it had been his job to protect the kid. A job he definitely hadn’t done perfectly. Matt looked good though. John would have to see him walk to know if he limped at all, but it didn’t look from here like he was favouring the leg that had taken Gabriel’s bullet, or holding his weight off it. He stood balanced and straight in a black coat with a scarf wound around his longish neck.

John watched him pull out his phone and check for messages, then put it away and look around expectantly.

“Waiting for somebody…” John muttered unthinkingly again, only to be yanked abruptly out of his thoughts in reply. 

“What are you still sittin’ here for!!?” 

Connie’s voice got shrill when she got excited.

John sighed. He abandoned his drink, just like he apparently was so good at, and pushed himself out of the booth.

*** 

“Holy shit,” was what Matt said, when John pushed open the door to _Vinnie’s_ and came to stand next to him under the awning. “McClane!?” He was leaning back a little in his surprise, taking him in.

John spread his arms in a ‘the one and only’ gesture. Matt gave a sharp “Ha!” of excitement. He ignored the umbrella on offer in John’s left hand in favour of launching himself forward on tiptoe, throwing his arms enthusiastically around John’s shoulders, and hanging on. Apparently the occasion called for hugging. 

Matt was damp with the weather, and his hair smelled of a citrus-y shampoo John was surprised to find familiar. Sure, he had had his face buried in this soft mop of hair before, John realized; throwing him to the floor of his exploding apartment, covering him as airborne luxury cars sailed over their heads. But all he could remember smelling at the time was the ash and choking smoke, their mingled sweat. And blood. 

John slapped the kid on the back a few times. 

Matt pulled away, grinning. John allowed himself a little smile back. It was good to see him. John tried not to think the word ‘alive’.

“So what goes on with you these days?” John asked. And then to satisfy Kowalski, because he knew she would ask: “Living in the city?”

Matt nodded, still grinning widely. 

“With Kennedy, actually.” He held up a hand, gesturing out to the sidewalk at a girl on the approach. She had a hood pulled up against the rain, but a long sheath of sandy coloured hair spilled out the side of it and down the front of her jacket. 

John nodded. So this was who Matt had been waiting for. “So how long have you two been—“

“Oh no,” Matt said, as the girl walked up to join them under the awning. “No, not since high school,” he went on, as she pulled back her hood and looked curiously between them. Matt put an exaggeratedly lecherous arm around her shoulders, “I mean, I keep trying but…”

“There’s just one tiny problem,” Kennedy said, clearly catching on to the drift of the conversation topic, like it wasn’t a new one for them. 

“Tiny? Ouch! Not in front of company, Kenn,” he told her theatrically out of the side of his mouth. “My penis,” Matt clarified, unnecessarily loudly, although the sidewalks were mostly deserted in this weather. “My penis is the problem. …Guess there _is_ such a thing as bad press,” he muttered, removing his arm from her shoulders so he could make a cordial introductory gesture like Vanna White showcasing a Brand New Car. “Kenn,” he announced with a little incline of his head, “prefers the company of the ladies.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” John said, which earned him a grin from Kennedy and a gasp of mock offense from Matt, with an accompanying gesture that might have been meant to represent clutching imaginary pearls.

“Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying,” Matt said good naturedly when he had recovered. “I mean, can I get a high five for highschool me? Come on,” he said, pointing an appreciative finger at Kennedy and moving it up and down in a general indication that under her bulky overcoat lurked what Matt must consider to be a spectacular figure. “I went to third base with that!” Matt raised his hand in the air and then, without waiting to see if anybody else would, he pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket and high-fived himself. 

“And yet they wonder why we swear off men.” Kennedy rolled her eyes, albeit fondly. 

John looked down at his boots, unsure whether he was supposed to smile. Was the kid’s sense of humour always this cheesy? 

“You, however, seem very cool,” Kennedy was telling him, holding out a hand. “I’m Kennedy Marshall.”

“John McClane,” he replied. 

“In the flesh, finally,” she said, her tone friendly and her handshake firm. “Matt keeps the clippings from the Fourth of July attacks on his—“

“Okay!” said Matt hurriedly. “Settle down, everybody. I’m sure Detective McClane has had enough of my personal humiliation for one night. I know I have.” Matt’s voice went suddenly soft. “We should…let him get back to his date, there.” Matt threw a glance through the window in Connie’s direction then looked down at his shoes, scuffling with the toe of one of his sneakers at something on the pavement.

“Nice work, McClane,” he remarked finally, flipping his hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head so he could look up at them again. “She’s kinda hot, in a…age appropriate kinda way. Right Kenn?”

“Totally.” Kennedy nodded sagely. “Got that tough-as-nails Jodie Foster thing going. Great hair.”

Kennedy reached up and pulled her hood back up over her own long sandy mane. Outside of the lee of the awning, the rain had started to come down harder.

“She’ll be thrilled,” John said, handing Kennedy his umbrella.

Matt put up a hand and rubbed at the nape of his neck. The jovial mood had turned awkward somewhere. Maybe it was time to break up the happy reunion.

“Well listen, I won’t keep you kids,” John said. “I just wanted to catch up, see what you’re up to,” he directed this at Matt. “Where you’re at these days. I uh… always felt like I should have at least asked you that back when I left you at the hospital. Felt bad about it.” He gestured back through the window. “Connie always gives me a hard time that I never even asked you if you had somewhere to go, after all your shit– sorry,” John apologized, with a tip of his head at Kennedy. Lesbian or not, she was still a lady. “After all your stuff got blown up. And me with that whole two bedroom apartment, with just me and all.”

“Ha,” John watched Matt’s eyes go wide a moment. “You mean we could have been roomies?” He wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that reaction. “Could have been fun. And disastrous. Probably mostly disastrous.” 

John was probably supposed to make some witty agreement with this assessment, but he couldn’t help but think he would be more patient as a roommate than Matt would probably imagine. He was a lot less pushy and sarcastic when people weren’t trying to blow him up. 

Not that Matt would ever need to know it. While the time they spent together had been…intense, to say the least, John supposed they probably didn’t actually know each other all that well. All enthusiastic hugging in the rain notwithstanding.

“Well it looks like you found a much better deal, anyhow,” John said, with what he hoped was a kindly smile at Kennedy.

“Yes, totally,” Matt agreed quickly, launching into his cheesy stand-up comic routine again. “Living with a lesbian is the bomb. I never have to hide my porn, and my place is full of hot girl on girl action every date night.”

“Who are you kidding?” Kennedy said coolly, stepping back to pop open the umbrella and set it on her shoulder. “This _is_ date night.” 

“It’s true. We are both tragically single,” Matt confessed with a put-on sigh. “Living with a lesbian is actually less hot girl action and more red wine and cats.”

“There is one cat!” Kennedy exclaimed.

“To which I am highly allergic,” Matt argued smoothly.

“Slightly allergic,” she corrected him. “And you _love_ Kierkegaard.”

“Nobody loves that pussy like you, Kenn.”

“You still got that extra room at your place?” Kennedy asked John, laughingly exasperated.

John smiled for real this time. 

“I felt bad about it is all,” he said, seriously. “I shoulda at least checked you were okay,” he said, turning back to Matt. “But you look great.”

Matt blinked. 

“Like you’re doing real good,” John went on, not sure why he felt the need to correct himself. 

Matt did look good. Unlike the day they had met, he looked like he had showered and shaved in the past twelve hours. He had maybe even gained a bit of weight, just enough to round out his face a little. Which maybe did him the disservice of making him look even younger than he was, but it wasn’t such a bad thing, in John’s opinion. 

John ran a hand over the stubble on his scalp.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “You look good too.” And his smile this time was small, shy.

John stopped what he was doing and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He thought it might be about to get awkward again, but Matt cocked his head. 

“You know, it’s never too late, McClane,” he said. “…I mean if you want to catch up, why not just take my number? We’ll hang out.”

Hang out. John tried not to think about a guy his age trying to ‘hang out’ in the places Matt and Kennedy would be likely to invite him to. He fished wordlessly in his coat pocket for his phone instead, handed it over for Matt to enter his number in. 

“Thanks for the shelter,” Kennedy was saying, offering John back his umbrella. 

He held up a hand. “Keep it. There’s about twenty of ’em in the lost and found down at the precinct.”

“Wow. Nice,” Kennedy said. 

Her genuine tone struck a contrast with a sarcastically coquettish simper from Matt, who was grinning again and handing his phone back: “Always a true blue hero.”

“That’s Farrell for ‘thank you’,” she said firmly, turning back to John one last time. Then she turned back to Matt and elbowed him squarely in the ribs.

He playfully winced, then offered her his arm so they could huddle together under the umbrella. John watched them go for a minute, listening to the snide murmurs and indignant squawks of their teasing as they sauntered off into the drizzle.

He turned and headed back inside, feeling newly aware of the weight of his phone in his pocket. 

When John got back their food had arrived and Kowalski had started on a fresh drink. One eyebrow was raised expectantly.

“The kid’s lesbian girlfriend says you’re hot,” John reported, as he slid into the booth. 

“Uh huh.” The eyebrow was still raised. “She’s not so bad herself,” she said without missing a beat. “Ya get the kid’s number?”

“…Yeah,” John resisted a sudden urge to put his hand into the pocket of his coat, where he could still feel his phone sitting as if it had grown heavier, or warmer somehow, carrying its new contact.

“Good,” Connie said. “You owe me a lost and found umbrella, Gene Kelly.” She pointed at him with the french fry on the end of her fork. “And it better be black.”

“Only the best for you, Kowalski,” John replied, picking up his own fork and digging in. He was sure he had seen a pink and orange Hello Kitty one down there last week that would be just the ticket.

Despite what she obviously wanted for some reason, John wasn’t sure he was going to call. What the hell could two people as different as they were find in common to talk about? John didn’t know the first damn thing about hacking and computers, pop music or the latest video games. It wasn’t as if they could just pick up where they left off, either. Their talk on that infamous day had drifted to some places John didn’t necessarily like to discuss too often. Which was disconcerting enough in itself. 

What Connie didn’t see about their little reunion scene outside the window of their favourite booth tonight, was that the thought of calling Matt wasn’t comfortable. Thinking of Matt meant remembering cracked ribs and bloodied knuckles and Lucy with her wrists tied up and a gun to her temple. Thinking about Matt had always felt… dangerous. Maybe for more reasons than the ones John could make sense of.

But then, whatever powers that be had brought him and Matt together in front of God, the Universe and all of New York City tonight. And the satellites hadn’t fallen from the sky, not a single building had burst into flame, and the country hadn’t been taken hostage by any cyber-psychos with a death wish.

At least not that he knew of, yet.

*** 

“You know, I’m glad you called.”

Matt swirled the last of his beer around the bottom of his glass. It had been his idea to come back here to meet up, so he could return Kowalski’s umbrella at the ‘scene of the caper’ as Matt put it, even though John had said repeatedly that he could keep it. 

“Yeah?” John replied. In the end, calling had seemed like the polite thing to do, after taking down his number and all.

Besides, it wouldn’t do to mention of course, but it was worth it to get Kowalski off his back about abandoning him at the hospital like a puppy at the pound. He would give her this, the only other woman he had ever met that could work a guilt trip as effectively had been Holly. 

John watched Matt give his glass another swirl, let the foam coat the sides of the glass and slide down. The kid really nursed his booze, John was already halfway through his second. Or maybe that was just what happened when somebody spent as much time talking as Matt did. 

“Yeah. It was good catching up with you.” 

Something about that made John smile over his own drink. ‘Catching up’, Matt called it. If this had been an interrogation, it would have been the easiest of John’s life. Matt had given up everything – starting with his latest jobs, to what sounded like every job he had ever had, his family and upbringing in snooty upstate New York, and his entire dating history …which, it turned out, included a Jennifer, a Melanie, what sounded like more than one Stephanie, a Ryan who was a girl and a Cary, who was a guy. 

John had been quick in using a hasty swig of his beer to cover any outward reaction to that last little tidbit. Matt had prattled unconcernedly on, so John counted himself successful at not looking old and out of touch, and what Lucy would call ‘so not PC’.

Matt was quiet now though, looking down into the dregs of his hipster local micro-brew and obviously trying to find a way to signal the end of the conversation, even though John’s glass was still considerably less empty than Matt’s. 

“We – heh,” he said finally, looking back up at John with a smirk. “We really went through something together, didn’t we?”

“Something,” John agreed wryly, “yeah.” Because how the fuck else did you describe a day like that one?

They both laughed into their pints. John took a sip.

“Yeah, it was good seeing you too,” he said finally, giving Matt the out he was looking for, and feeling strangely reluctant. 

Matt looked up at him gratefully. John smiled and Matt tipped his glass on its heel again, so he could drop his gaze back down into it. It was hard to say with Matt’s bangs falling forward over his face like that, but he might have been blushing.

“It makes sense,” Matt said, nodding a little to himself without looking up. “Meeting up like this. You go through something like that with somebody and they’re…a part of your life after that, you know?” 

Matt waited a beat until they were looking at each other again before he finished. “It’s…indelible.”

“Indelible,” John repeated. He was as surprised by the suddenly soft tone to his voice as he was by the fact that Matt seemed to be doing him the courtesy of not explaining what ‘indelible’ means.

Matt was just watching him, smiling quietly. He was uncharacteristically still. 

“Well,” Matt said abruptly, and the spell seemed to break. “You should call me again sometime.” He was moving again, sliding out of the booth and getting to his feet. 

John watched him button up his coat, and reach under the table for the black umbrella.

“I believe this is yours.”

“I believe it’s raining again,” John pointed out, without bothering to nod at what was going on out the window next to them.

“Oh.”

They both smiled.

“Keep it,” John said. “I toldja there’s about—”

“Twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct,” Matt finished for him. “Glad to hear the NYPD is really cracking down on that scourge of rogue umbrellas threatening the peace and running our city streets. True Blue, through and through.”

If the spell hadn’t been broken before, Matt was sure as heck his old smartass self now. 

John cleared his throat. “Y’know, it wasn’t a date.”

Matt’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out for a second. The umbrella in his hand moved spasmodically in some sort of failed gesture. “I– what?”

“Last week. That lady you saw me with when we met up here. You said you were gonna let me get back to my date, but it wasn’t one,” John explained, not quite sure why he felt like he needed to. 

“Oh,” said Matt, awkwardly. “Okay. Good to know.” 

“Hey you gave me your whole life story, it’s only fair,” John pointed out. 

Matt gave a self-deprecating laugh of acknowledgement that made his eyes sparkle good-naturedly and ducked his head. 

“That was Connie Kowalski, she’s uh – well she’s kinda my boss actually,” John went on. “Do me a favour and don’t ever mention to her that I admitted I know that.”

“Your secret is safe, Detective,” Matt vowed, when he lifted his head again. His brown eyes were still sparkling mirthfully. 

John nodded his thanks. Matt tried to put his hands in his pockets and forgot he was holding the umbrella.

“Oh. Right,” he said, fumbling then correcting his grip on the handle. “I will return this next time we meet up,” Matt said, growing serious and pointing the end of the umbrella at him in a pledging gesture. 

Apparently they were doing this again. Which, John realized with a mild nudge of surprise, he might not actually mind. 

“And I’m picking up the tab on my way out,” Matt continued, “don’t try and stop me.”

John opened his mouth to respond but he was silenced with a jab of the umbrella into the air in front of his face and a sharp sound from Matt like a nanny shushing a protesting toddler. Fine, John thought, snapping his mouth shut. Matt could find out about his tab at _Vinnie’s_ the embarrassing way.

“Next time,” he said, in farewell.

“Next time,” John agreed, and they both smiled again. 

Matt turned and made his way to the cash register at the bar. Lo and behold, when Vinnie himself made his way over to serve him, Matt was obviously not only told something like “John McClane never pays for a drink in my bar”, but also something like “any friend of McClane’s is on the house,” because good old Vinnie walked away without even opening the register, and Matt turned around and put the back of his wrist to his forehead in a mock swoon, mouthing the words “MY HERO” before shaking his shaggy head incredulously and walking out.

Leaving all satellites in orbit and the cyber-psycho count still at zero. They were two for two. 

John took another sip of his dwindling beer and looked out the window at the black of Matt’s umbrella bobbing away into the distance, slow to disappear into the grey Manhattan drizzle.

“Indelible,” he said again, into his echoing glass.

*** 

“You’re whistling.”

John stopped the jaunty tune immediately, and put the coffee pot back on the burner. “Huh?”

“Whistling,” Connie said, “you.” 

“Sounds like McClane got laaaa-aid!” Mendoza drawled from the desk across from them, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head like he was settling in for a gossip break.

John put his coffee cup to his lips with one hand and flipped him off with the other, instead. 

“You’re never this happy,” Connie pointed out, in agreement. “Spill.”

“Just excited it’s Friday and I get to go two whole days without looking at this dumb ass.” John jerked his thumb at Mendoza.

“Take a good look McClane,” Mendoza bantered, leaning sideways enough to lift a buttock off the chair and rub a hand over it. “My mama’s in town this weekend. Three nights of her sweet home cooking and this ass’ll be two sizes bigger, man. Minimum.”

“Your Mama huh? Say hi to her for me,” John quipped, turning his back on Mendoza before he could switch from patting tauntingly at his ass to his traditional conversation-ender, which was usually the tried and true crotch-grab.

“You call that Farrell kid?” Connie asked, changing tack as she followed him. John cut the straightest path he could, weaving in between the aisles upon aisles of desks and uncomfortable old pull-up style office chairs that John knew for a fact had populated the bullpen since the late 70’s. 

“S’a matter Kowalski, don’t like your new umbrella?” John gestured under her desk at the item in question as they passed. It looked plain white, but when you opened it up it had the horn and shaggy mane of a unicorn stitched onto it. Googly eyes and all. It wasn’t as good as the Hello Kitty one he was sure he’d seen there the week before, but it was clearly sized for preschoolers which would make it pretty funny when it actually rained.

“You kidding, it’s my lucky day. I lost one just like it just last week,” Connie deadpanned. “So’d ya see him or what?”

“Yeah, yeah,” John said. “Had a drink. Got the whole life story. You’ll be happy to know he lives in a tidy apartment uptown, where he mooches rent off his friend you saw him with the other night.”

“The platonic gay girlfriend,” Connie reiterated, as if she were taking notes. 

“She was very into your hair,” John informed her. Connie made an aborted movement, like she had been about to put a flattered hand up to her curls. 

“He likes you, y’know,” she said seriously, just as John had taken a mouthful from his coffee cup. He swallowed carefully. “I can tell. Stares at your neck when you talk.”

“My neck,” John repeated, keeping his tone skeptical. 

“It’s a nice neck,” Connie shrugged. “When I met Frank, his neck was the first thing I noticed about him. Sometimes at home, I’ll give him a back rub. Just to get my hands on that nice thick neck, and those big broad shoulders.” Connie held her hands up and flexed her fingers appreciatively over her husband’s imaginary physique.

“Too much information, Kowalski,” John said disaffectedly, taking another careful sip of his coffee. 

Connie just smiled. “I’m telling you,” she asserted serenely, “a woman knows these things.” Then she walked away back to her desk, smoothing a palm lovingly over her curls as she went. 

John set his coffee down and tried not to be too obvious about drawing his hand appraisingly over the back of his neck a couple of times before getting back down to work.

*** 

The next time Matt decided they should ‘catch up’ happened sooner than John had been expecting.

Matt had been the one to call this time, which came as more of a surprise than it probably should have. John hadn’t given much thought to the fact that his number would of course show up in Matt’s phone the first time he called him, or that Matt might be likely to save it and call him unannounced – but apparently that was the way people did it these days.

The night was full of surprises actually. John thought it would be annoying watching the game with Matt; that he would talk over the action or spend the entirety of half time complaining about the politics of professional sports and What’s Wrong with America, but he didn’t. He sat mostly quietly, sipping at a bottle of the beer he had thoughtfully brought along and swearing intermittently under his breath whenever a good play got sacked. 

When Matt had showed up at the door – holding out his offering of a six pack of trendy independent brewery IPA – John had been surprised then too.

“I feel underdressed,” he had remarked as he took Matt’s coat, looking down at his own casual combination of faded blue jeans and a worn, washed out old Henley. 

Matt was wearing a steel gray button down in a soft-looking fabric that might have been silk, tucked into a pair of jeans belted with a silver buckle and in a darker wash than John had ever seen on him. His hair was combed unusually neatly and his face was clean shaven. The shoes he kicked off onto the mat next to the door were not sneakers. 

“Nah,” Matt said, hastily untucking his shirt to soften the formality of the look. “I had a thing before this, sorry. You look great,” he said, waving a hand at him.

Normally John would have thrown anybody who gave him permission to dress down in his own apartment a salty look and a snappy retort, but looking at Matt now, he was honestly just glad he had opted for the jeans instead of the gym sweats he had been wearing when Matt had called earlier and asked casually what he was up to for the evening. 

“Thanks,” John had said drily instead, heading for the fridge with the beer.

Nothing more of note had really happened since Matt’s grand entrance. The evening had progressed through polite conversation about the apartment-slash-neighborhood and having any trouble finding the place, then the obligatory run-down of everything John was working on these days. After that they had gotten down to the business of watching the game and consuming Matt’s bitter organic beer in companionable near-silence, which frankly, John was unexpectedly appreciating. 

When he looked at Matt now though – lounging on the opposite end of his couch, neatly dressed and sleekly combed and looking like a page out of the kind of magazine that sold people stylish hippie beer in ‘retro’ brown bottles that would dangle languidly from their slim fingers – something occurred to him. John waited for his opening at the commercial break to ask.

“So,” he said, resisting the urge to clear his throat and trusting his voice to sound casual. “Hot date, or what?”

“Huh?” Matt turned away from the screen to look at him. The beer and tv had turned his gaze soft and distracted. 

“Your thing before this, that you got all gussied up for,” John explained, eyeing Matt’s ensemble and giving a wave of his hand in the general direction of the overall effect. “Were you on a date?”

“What? No…” Matt looked down at himself and smoothed a hand over the soft fabric of his shirt. “Oh,” he said, like he had forgotten putting all of this obvious effort into himself, “no, actually, it was a work thing.”

Matt looked back up at him and shrugged. John nodded, but neither of them looked back at the screen. 

The thing was, John had seen the way Matt worked. Matt worked out of his home from under a heap of candy bar and nacho chip wrappers, wearing what looked like whatever he had found in the ‘maybe wear again’ pile of the laundry festooned over his bedroom floor.

Granted, John thought, that had been a couple years ago now. And Matt was at an age where a couple of years could make all the difference maturity-wise. There was also the neatening effect a female roommate could have on a guy to take into account, and there was always the possibility that the way Matt looked when he worked might not be what he looked like if he had to meet a client.

John was staring, he realized. The difference was just so striking was all, even from these most recent couple of times they had met up, and John couldn’t seem to stop looking over at him this evening, noticing things. Matt smiled slightly, and turned his attention back to the television.

But not before his gaze dropped unmistakably to the region of John’s neck. 

Dammit, Kowalski. 

Several thoughts went barging through John’s brain at once and met up in the middle in some kind of mental traffic snarl. 

Matt kept the clippings from the day they met somewhere his roommate could regularly see them. His college dating history included a girl named Ryan and a guy named Cary. And John was becoming increasingly convinced he was smelling just the faintest whiff of aftershave.

“Matt,” John said, giving in this time to the urge to clear his throat awkwardly. There was no way to make this next question sound casual. “…Are you on a date right now?”

Matt turned back to look at him again. His hair hadn’t moved since he got here, there was some kind of product in it. 

Matt didn’t answer right away. He sat there, just looking at him for a second. Then he smiled. 

“No,” Matt said, simply. “No, that’s not where you’re at. And that’s cool.” He gave John another second’s regard with a sincere, open-looking expression then turned back to the game again, bringing his beer bottle tranquilly up to his lips.

That was it? ‘Cool?’ John didn’t feel cool.

“And where are _you_ ‘at’?” He kept his voice steady and unrushed.

Matt didn’t look at him this time. His gaze dropped down to the bottle in his hands. 

“I think part of me went there the first time you saved my life,” he mused distantly, picking at his beer label with pensive a fingernail. “It’s probably natural. Humans are pretty unoriginal.” 

His mouth curved upwards on one side in half an ironic smile that John could feel tugging at the corner of his own mouth in mirrored opinion.

Matt went to put the bottle detachedly to his lips again, only to interrupt himself. “Holy shit – FOUL. That’s a foul! How is Pruitt not ejected??” he ranted into the neck of the bottle in his hand. “Bullshit,” Matt muttered against the lip of the bottle, finally taking a swig. 

If they weren’t cool, it was clear that Matt was hell bent on pretending they were. John turned back to the game, and tried to follow suit.

By the end of the six pack, it had actually worked surprisingly well. The Giants lost, which was no big surprise, and they ended the evening arguing pleasantly about next year’s roster and whether or not Manning should be traded.

Eventually Matt pointed out, not inaccurately, that it was getting late and he should get back home – before Kennedy changed the locks on him just so he couldn’t wake her up stumbling around the apartment at all hours, and found a new roommate who would let her buy three more cats. 

They agreed it wasn’t likely, but that it wasn’t impossible either.

At the door, as John was handing him his jacket, Matt said that they should do this again soon.

John agreed. It was polite, but maybe it was a little more than that too – which maybe ought to have stopped surprising him by now. Tonight had been…nice.

But when Matt said next that he had a friend holding tickets for the Knicks on Thursday if John’s schedule was good for it, John still wasn’t feeling ‘cool’ enough to say that out loud. Which meant maybe it wasn’t the best idea.

“Look, Matt…” 

“If this is about what we talked about before,” Matt cut in, holding up his hands in a peace-keeping gesture, “I said it was cool, and it is. This is just a couple of guys watching sports. I swear.”

Matt’s shirt was still untucked. His five o’clock shadow had started to come in and he had run his hands through his hair enough times tonight in his ire at the referee’s calls that it was loose and shaggy around his face again. He looked like John remembered him. Like Matt. 

With those big vulnerable eyes, and his honest questions. Waiting for an answer.

“Yeah,” John said, nodding. “Thursday’s good.”

Humans were so damned unoriginal. 

Matt grinned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He typed in a message and pushed his free hand into his hair again, waiting for a reply.

It was mere seconds before the screen on Matt’s phone flickered silently, and he presumably got his reply. 

“Great,” he said looking up at John. “We’re on, Thursday is officially a thing.”

A thing. Not a date. 

As John shut the door behind him, he vowed never to admit to Kowalski (and maybe himself) the way Matt’s eyeline had drifted toward the collar of his Henley as they said their goodnights.

*** 

When Thursday finally rolled around, there was nothing about Matt’s bright orange Knicks hoodie, his faded jeans with the slightly ragged cuffs, or his comfortably black and white sneaker-clad feet that suggested their ‘official thing’ was anything but what Matt claimed.

Matt had even interpreted the arm John held out in welcome, when they spotted each other on the busy street corner where they had arranged to meet, as an invitation for a hug again. And when John had obliged, he didn’t smell even the barest hint of aftershave. Just that oddly familiar grapefruit-smelling shampoo. And Matt. 

They got hot dogs outside Penn Station, because they were too expensive inside the Garden, and they both agreed their money would be better spent on flat, overpriced beer. The beer turned out to be both, which wasn’t a surprise, and the Knicks won, which sort of was. Then they ended up at _Vinnie’s_ again because as Matt put it, walking in there with John was like ‘bringing your own drunken cash cow, and he wasn’t too shy to milk that sweet, boozy teat’. 

Their third drink in, without either of them making any sign of buying dinner, John warned Matt that if he got him cut off at _Vinnie’s_ , this would be their last trip to the milk shed. Matt had giggled tipsily and gotten up to order some good will nachos at the bar. The nachos were more or less gone now, and Matt was looking marginally more sober, but not much. 

“So, tell me,” John said conversationally, picking out a nearly-naked nacho that he really had no intention of eating anymore, and putting it down on his plate. “Which time, out of all the fucked up times Gabriel tried to kill us, was the first time I saved your life, exactly?”

Matt examined the plate between them, taking his time picking out a chip. Although John suspected he had just about as much intention of eating more of them as John did. 

“You don’t remember?” Matt asked smoothly, “I mean, isn’t it a bit early for Alzheimer’s to start kicking in?”

John flipped him the finger, and Matt grinned.

“Guess I was kinda wondering how you remembered it,” John said, letting his tone get a little more serious. 

Matt gave up pretending to search for a nacho that still had some vestige of cheese clinging to it. 

“I think that’s more of a date story,” he said, leaning back in the booth and regarding him coolly. “This is just a couple of guys out watching sports, remember?”

“Fair point,” John conceded. Matt was smiling now though, so he didn’t back off quite yet. “…Did you really have a work thing before you came over last week?”

It was a bit of a gamble. In John’s long experience questioning people, getting caught in a lie had the tendency to piss most of them off. 

Matt’s relaxed smile went full grin. 

“Ohhhh, I get it,” he drawled. “You and Vinnie here are in cahoots. Get the kid all liquored up and then fire up the interrogation! _Sneaky Detective is ssssssssssssssssneaky,_ ” Matt stage whispered, narrowing his eyes theatrically. 

Matt was no dummy either, and boy did John know it. He raised his drink to his smiling lips for something to do, so that he wouldn’t have to eat that dry chip on his plate, and waited.

“So I _may_ have misinterpreted your reaction to hearing that I sometimes date guys,” Matt sighed, punctuating the admission with a roll of his eyes. 

“Reaction?” John asked before he could stop himself. Here he was, thinking he had been so careful not to show one.

“Going out of your way to tell me that when I saw you here with your boss that it wasn’t a date,” Matt clarified. 

Which, when John thought about it, was exactly what he had done. 

“I mean, honestly, I get it, you’re not interested.”

John put his glass up in front of his mouth again. Matt had never actually _asked_ whether or not he might be interested. 

And maybe that was for the best. 

“When will you get it, man?” Matt was saying, holding his drink in his hand although it was pretty well finished now. “That I like hanging out with you? Even with no ulterior motive? You’re…kind of important to me,” Matt said, realizing his glass was empty and setting it down. “Like, a big influence on my life.”

John put his glass down too. 

“…Because we’re ‘indelible’?” Mostly, he couldn’t think what else to say.

Matt never seemed to be at a loss, though. 

“Yeah,” he said evenly. And whether or not he was sober, Matt was definitely serious. “Yes.” 

That unflinching openness that always got past John’s defenses, even when it was against his better judgement, was there again in the wide brown eyes. 

“Yeah,” John said, rather unexpectedly meaning it. “Okay.”

Matt nodded, looking satisfied his point was made.

“And now,” he announced, sliding a little sloppily out of the booth, “I must go and throw down a wicked piss. It shall be worthy of Secretariat. Order me another one of those,” Matt said, with a wave of his hand at his empty glass. “And ask for some menus I guess. We should probably eat some real food, I don’t want this to be the last trip to the milk shed.”

Matt grinned, and turned to go. 

“Hey Matt,” John asked, and Matt turned back, waiting. “The day you met me here, to return that umbrella. You didn’t happen to pick a day the forecast was calling for rain on purpose, so we’d have to meet up again, did ya?”

And just like the last time John had pressed him, his gamble paid off, and instead of getting irritated Matt simply smiled. 

“The weather report is public knowledge, Detective,” he said, narrowing his eyes in sardonic suspicion again. “Who’s to say either one of us didn’t make judicious use of that tried and true secret weapon known to hackers and detectives alike the world over: _Google_?”

“Who’s to say,” John agreed, lifting his pint again with an enigmatic smile.

“Sssssneaky,” Matt reiterated happily. Then he turned around and made his way, more or less steadily, to the restrooms.

*** 

John thumped his fist impatiently on the top of his desk.

The computer monitor jumped in front of his dry, tired eyes, but the cursor just continued to blink belligerently at him. The one thing the JTTF had seen fit to update when they moved in was the technology, so it was a little newer than the furniture but not by enough, apparently. John wasn’t convinced it was much of an improvement, anyway. 

He had shut down and re-started this useless machine three times now, and it still wouldn’t open up the interface like it was supposed to. He just kept getting the same error message on the black and white DOS screen he didn’t even know computers had anymore. 

Frankly he kind of missed the old black and white tube monitors. Those things had enough real estate jutting out the back you could put a satisfying smack right down on the top of it. 

Not that that had ever made the damn things work for him either, but it had usually made him feel better. 

“Come on, you hunk-a garbage,” John gritted, leaning down under the desk and giving the whole works a not-so-gentle jiggle.

“You’re shaking the wrong end.” When John pulled his head out from under the desk, Kowalski was standing over it. “The Etch-a-Sketch is up here,” she said drily, pointing to the still frustratingly black and white screen. 

“It’d be about as fuckin’ _useful_ ,” John growled, punctuating it with a sharp jab at the desk’s edge with his knuckles. Which immediately started stinging like he had taken some of the skin off. 

Connie just looked at him. “Why don’t you call it a night?” she said, judiciously. “I already called and told Frank it’s gonna be a late one. We could stop off at _Vinnie’s_? ”

John made a fist again and checked out his knuckles. Yep, the second and third one were skinned pretty good. 

“Nah,” he declined, unballing his fist and gesturing at the stack of paper on his desk. “I should get these filed.”

“You know, you could just call him.” 

“Huh?” John responded, although he had a feeling he knew exactly where Kowalski was headed with this.

“The Farrell boy. Just call him.”

“This thing was probably made before he was born anyway,” John said, shaking his throbbing hand distractedly, and casting an annoyed glance at the computer box sitting stolidly under the desk.

Not for the first time that evening, John thought irritably that Matt would indeed probably be able to tell him how to fix it. His gritty-feeling gaze flicked toward the ancient desk phone sitting next to the monitor, but he wasn’t about to give Kowalski the satisfaction. 

When John looked back up at her, she was frowning at him in that way she had that meant he was missing the point. Then, she put her hands on her hips in the way that meant she thought he was doing it on purpose. 

John prepared for an onslaught.

“Two weeks ago, you meet up with the kid, and start walking around here whistling like Tweety Bird,” Connie enumerated, with the distinct air of somebody getting started on a long list with a title something like Reasons McClane is an Idiot. “Last week he takes you out to the basketball game, and you got everybody around the water cooler cracking up with your story about Simmons and that stalker case that turned out to be an escaped armadillo.” Connie took her hands off her hips and folded them smartly across her chest. “And this week you’re all pissed off and surly again.” 

What did any of that have to do with his tech problem? 

“He obviously hasn’t called, and I think you should just man up and take the initiative already,” Connie concluded, succinctly.

Okay, so it wasn’t like him to turn her down for an invite to their favourite watering hole. But John was a professional, and he took his job seriously most of the time was all.

“I’m not _surly_ ,” John asserted. It was a perfectly legitimate response.

Connie just eyed the edge of the desk skeptically. John realized he was shaking his injured hand again, and stopped. 

He put his thumb and pointer finger up to his tired eyelids and pressed, instead. He heard Connie give a sigh that held the unmistakable tone of Giving Up. 

“Don’t stay all night,” she said with sudden and unnecessary sympathy, and headed back to her desk to pack up for the evening.

John waited until she was out of the building – jiggling and cursing intermittently at various parts of his computer, though mostly for show at this point – before he went ahead and did the same. 

Not that it was anybody’s business, but it was true it had been a while since he had talked to Matt. 

If the last few times had been any indication, it shouldn’t have been more than a couple days before Matt called again to set up their next ‘thing’. The rest of the week had gone by without a message from him though. And then the next week. It was getting on for two weeks now since John had heard a word from him. 

It didn’t have to mean anything. In fact, John was sure that if he did actually pick up the phone and call him right now, Matt would insist that it didn’t.

Just as he had insisted that their last few visits hadn’t meant much of anything either. Just a couple guys watching sports, he said. 

Of course, that last time they had done a lot more drinking – and a lot more talking – than watching of anything. Every now and then John couldn’t seem to help wondering if maybe there was something that had come out over their shared plate of nachos, and what was definitely a few more free beers than was wise, that Matt hadn’t especially wanted to share. 

He hadn’t exactly voluntarily offered up the intel that he had come over to John’s place all spiffed up on purpose, for one thing. John looked back on the way he had so obviously tried to gloss over it at the time and wondered if the kid just might be embarrassed about it or something stupid like that. 

Matt hadn’t seemed embarrassed at the time though. Not at his apartment and not days later at _Vinnie’s_ when John pressed him about it. Not that that made it okay to press the kid in the first place, John supposed. 

He had just…needed to know. 

It was responsible, to ask. Matt had been clear for a while now about wanting them to stay in touch, to be friends. And there was no way that was going to happen if Matt was harbouring motives that were going to get in the way. It was important, to clear the air and make sure there was nothing that might mess stuff up, make things awkward between them. Or tense.

…Or pretty much exactly how John was feeling right now. 

John sighed. Maybe Kowalski was on to something after all, and it was just simply his turn to call. He looked again at the decrepit old desk phone next to his hopeless failure of a computer. 

John made to reach for the receiver, and then stopped. He was getting ahead of himself. Maybe the reason Matt hadn’t called was something else entirely. Maybe Matt was busy, or out of town. 

Maybe, John thought – not for the first time – it was _nothing at all_. 

He was thinking in circles. He shut his eyes and rubbed wearily at the creases that had been etched into his forehead for years now, and tried not to imagine they felt deeper than they had a week ago. Before Matt Farrell had walked back into his life – and then consequently apparently walked right back out.

John stopped himself and sighed again. A big deep breath in this time, that he let out slowly through his nose. 

He was just tired, that was all, letting Kowalski’s weird romantic – or possibly perverted, John couldn’t be sure – ideas about what was going on between him and the kid get into his head. It was nothing serious, going a couple of weeks without a chat. Any miscommunications about the first couple times they had met up were all put to rest now – that was the whole point of John bringing it up. He and Matt were just ‘hanging out’, Matt had used the words himself. 

His problem today was a tech problem, plain and simple. And frankly, it wasn’t the first one Kowalski or anybody else had seen get the better of him, or his temper.

John packed up the last of the papers on his desk, deliberately not looking again at the phone in the corner of it, before he pushed in his dilapidated office chair and headed down the deserted aisles of desks toward the door.

*** 

“John?” The voice on the other end of the line when John finally gave in – after two mostly-sleepless nights plus one day spent in such a foul temper that Kowalski literally sent him home for accidentally snapping the plastic feeder tray off of a particularly belligerent printer that repeatedly insisted it was suffering from a paper jam that was only possible if somebody had invented invisible paper while John wasn’t looking – and dialed the number for Matt’s mobile, wasn’t Matt’s.

“…Kennedy?” 

It was a reasonable guess. She was the only one of Matt’s people he had met that would have access to his personal items and possessed a reasonably female-sounding voice. Come to think of it, she was the only one of Matt’s people John had met, period. 

“Sorry,” she said, in confirmation. “I wouldn’t normally pick up Matt’s phone, but I saw your name on the screen and…” 

“Sure,” John said, “no problem. I was just…” 

Why _was_ he calling anyway? To ask Matt what the hell his problem was? To check in (that he wasn’t a corpse in a dumpster somewhere)? Because it was John’s ‘turn’? Even in his head, none of them sounded like likely messages a person leaves with a roommate. Not a person in their right mind, anyway.

“…Calling.” John finished lamely.

“Honestly, I’m kind of relieved you did,” Kennedy said, and John had to wonder if he was imagining the way she sounded slightly breathless. “If I had your number in mine I would have called you myself by now, to be honest.” 

“Everything alright?” John asked, keeping his tone even, although his mind was already running through every step in the standard procedure for the ‘corpse in a dumpster’ scenario, which suddenly didn’t seem like nearly as crazy a reason to call as it had only seconds ago. 

“That I know of,” Kennedy said, speaking a little slower. “I mean, I haven’t seen Matt in days.” 

“What?” John gave up all pretense of sounding casual, and slipped into Missing Persons Procedure: Step 1. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Oh,” Kennedy said, sounding surprised by his tone. “I know where he _is_.” She gave a nervous sounding laugh. “He’s in his room.”

“…His room.” 

“Yeah,” she said. “For four days. Since the last sighting. And then probably another three days before that.”

“Oh,” said John this time.

“Yeah,” she said again. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to alarm you or anything,” Kennedy said kindly, if not a little too late. “He does this. A lot. I know he’s working, and this is how he likes to focus and everything but… It’s not exactly healthy. I mean he must come out, for bathroom breaks or whatever, but he goes all kind of nocturnal and does all that stuff in the middle of the night so I don’t see much of him, and I just …worry. You know?”

“…Yeah,” John agreed quietly. Because he did know.

Suddenly, irritatingly, frustrating-that-Kowalski-was-right-all-along-ly, he did know. 

Why he was doing this, why he had called. Why he was lying awake at night, and snapping idiot paper-jam-hallucinating printers in half by day. He was worried. 

In the past few short weeks since they had reconnected, Matt had become somebody John worried about. Somebody he cared for.

“He eat?” John quizzed her, remembering the piles of junk food wrappers littering Matt’s apartment the first time they had met.

“Inconclusive,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure he’s squirrelling food away in there, although I don’t know how much of it he actually eats, because it’s kind of starting to smell a bit like…”

“Like a corpse in a dumpster?” John finished for her, gamely.

“In a word? Yup,” Kennedy replied, finally sounding like she might be smiling at least a little now. “So listen,” she said, giving John the brief sense she was winding up for some kind of sales pitch. “I was just going to try to lure him out with Chinese food and Netflix. And if you’re not super busy or anything… I know he would come out of his room for you, if you maybe wanted to join us?”

“Can I bring anything?” John asked, because while hanging out with two people half his age watching Internet movies might not be his first choice for a Friday night, if it was going to be good for Matt, then suddenly there was no question. 

“Just you,” Kennedy said, and this time he was sure he could hear her grinning. “You provide the bait, I’ll bully him into the shower and clean out the ‘dumpster’ while he’s distracted.”

“Love it when a plan comes together,” John said, approvingly.

“Thank you,” Kennedy said, in her sincere, friendly voice. “…And John? Make it fast?”

“Bet you the bill I get there before the delivery guy,” John vowed, then ended the call. Just a quick change of clothes, and he could be on his way.

And if he happened to pick out the low-necked Henley that had repeatedly drawn Matt’s eye the last time the two of them settled down in front of a television, well, who was to say it wasn’t a matter of pure coincidence?

*** 

If John had worried that it might get awkward, making conversation for an entire night with Matt and his platonic homosexual life partner – all evidence of her easy and unrelentingly friendly disposition aside – he needn’t have bothered.

When he arrived, the door was answered by a flushed and hurried-looking Kennedy, claiming she had received the most urgent of booty calls and must fly immediately across town into the waiting arms of her unexpected ‘girl on girl action’ as Matt would put it. 

Kids these days were so up front about their sexuality. John nodded politely and tried not to look either surprised or old. Although watching her rush around the small two-bedroom in an openly amourous tizzy, snatching up items like keys and a long blue scarf that looked a lot like the one Matt had been wearing the night he waited for her outside of _Vinnie’s_ , was sort of making him feel both. 

He was sure there was a time when he had been like this on his way to a date with Holly, but by now it was difficult to even remember it, much less how it had felt. 

“Matt’s still in the shower,” Kennedy said, plowing through the living room to stop at a hip, bohemian-style hat rack and grab her coat. John would have started to feel like the victim of a not-so-elaborate setup, except this was the most flustered he had ever seen her. “He should be out any minute though, and the food’s already in the kitchen. You’re sure you don’t mind?”

John smiled. “Get outta here,” he said gently. “Guess I owe you the bill.” He gave a nod back over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen from where, sure enough, the scent of kung pao chicken was wafting. 

Kennedy shrugged into her coat, and gave a mischievous grin that went fetchingly with the excitement glittering in her eyes and reddening her cheeks. “I used Matt’s credit card. He can just call it payback for all those free drinks.” 

And John was spared from having to think up a response to the information that Matt had clearly been going over the details of their outings together with his roommate, as she walked briskly toward him, reached behind him for the doorknob, and then gave him an impetuous peck firmly on the cheek.

“Thanks John,” she said, her sincere expression only dulling her excitement at the evening’s prospects for the briefest of moments, before she slid quickly by him and out the apartment door. 

She was right about one thing. It really was only minutes before Matt was finished in the shower. John barely had time to put the six-pack he had brought along into the fridge and conduct a preliminary investigation of the bags of takeout sitting on the counter.

“McClane?”

John turned to see Matt standing outside the kitchen. His hair was wet and he was clutching a towel wrapped haphazardly around his waist. He was otherwise naked, right down to his bare feet. 

John looked away. Then he realized there was actually no reason to do that, and looked back. 

“Hey,” he said, still making sure to keep his gaze trained on Matt’s face anyway. The expression there looked oddly blank. “Kennedy let me in,” he explained, with a gesture toward the door. “…She didn’t tell you I was coming?”

“She—no, totally. I mean yeah, yes. She…” Matt’s gaze flicked in the direction of one of the bedroom doors, and between Matt’s reaction and what she had said on the phone, John got the distinct impression that not much of what Kennedy said to Matt while he was holed up working in there had a real habit of sinking in. And Matt seemed to be thinking something similar. “Did she say, exactly um—” Matt looked around the apartment, pushing a hand through his wet hair as he did. “Did she _leave_?”

“Her girlfriend called,” John offered.

“Is that food?” Matt asked, confirming John’s suspicions about how much information actually made its way into Matt’s brain when he was focused on working. He raised his nose like a scenting Labrador and raised himself up on bare tip-toes to try and see past John into the kitchen. “…Wait. ‘Girlfriend’?”

“Lilah?” John tried to remember. Kennedy’s explanation and been both brief and rushed. “Lisa?”

“Lula,” Matt supplied. He looked down at his bare feet, with a dreamy, lecherous little smirk. 

“Lula,” John agreed. “She told me to tell you you were missing all the hot girl-on-girl.”

Matt aimed a short huff of laughter at his toes. When he looked back at John his gaze was clearer, with little more presence in it. He tightened his grip on the towel at his waist. 

“So, I’m afraid our gracious hostess isn’t gonna be coming home tonight. And I’m—“ Matt looked down, passed a hand over his unclothed torso. John’s eye followed the motion for an involuntary second before he wrenched it back up, all the way to Matt’s dripping hair. “Woefully indisposed,” Matt finished. He made a gesture back over his shoulder at his bedroom door. “I’m gonna go and just—”

“Yeah,” John said, nodding only partially as an excuse for averting his gaze. “Of course.”

*** 

They loaded up their plates with fried rice and egg rolls and spicy chicken and deep fried shrimp. Then they sat on the couch and ate it in silence in front of something Matt called a “Netflix Original” that appeared to be about a girl detective who didn’t realize she was a superhero.

Or at least John ate in silence. Matt picked at a shrimp, poked his rice around his plate with his chopsticks a while, and set his plate down to take a single bite out of his egg roll – which he doused liberally with several packets of both soy and plum sauce first – and then never picked it back up again.

Kennedy’s plan to lure Matt out of his hacker hibernation didn’t appear to be coming together at all. But he could see why she had tried. Close up, John could see now how drawn and pinched Matt looked. Dark circles under the eyes, the whole bit. And yet he was still distracted. It couldn’t be clearer that the only thing on Matt’s mind was getting back to his work.

John looked over at him, pretending to watch the tough girl detective jump out a three storey window and land lightly on her feet, even though he was plainly too busy tapping strung out fingers on the arm of the couch and tossing intermittent junkie-glances in the direction of his bedroom to be paying much attention. He tried to think if Matt had looked this bad when had first laid eyes on him tonight, but that only brought back the image of Matt standing undressed in front of him in the middle of the room.

He hadn’t seen dark marks under his eyes, just the way his skin was so pale it had a look like cream, like if John were to touch it it would ripple and give way under his fingers like silky liquid. He couldn’t remember pinched looking cheeks, just the curve of the bare shoulder as Matt twisted back to look nervously over it at his bedroom door, and the smooth lines of his chest – mostly hairless except for where a little dark trail under his navel disappeared into the towel held loosely around his waist. 

John took his eyes off of Matt before he turned from the screen and busted him staring. His gaze landed on the now long-abandoned plates of food on the coffee table instead, and John pulled himself up off the couch to clear them.

He had both plates in hand before Matt noticed what he was doing, and made a move guiltily to get up. 

“Hey, you don’t have t—I can…” 

“Would you _relax_?” John ordered. “It’s ten steps to your kitchen and they’re paper plates.”

Matt sat back, looking reluctant. When John got back, he had paused the action on the screen, as if John would be sorry he missed it. He dangled a bottle of beer from the six pack John had forgotten he put in the fridge over Matt’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Matt said idly, as he accepted it. And then, as he recognized the retro brown-bottled organic stuff he had brought by John’s last time: “Heeeeey, you remembered.”

It was the first sign of life Matt had shown all night. John smiled as he set down his own bottle and held out the rest of his offering from the kitchen.

“You barely ate any dinner, the least you can do is eat your dessert.”

“Ha.” Matt examined both the fortune cookies, swaddled in their crinkly packaging and nestled in his cupped palm, before grabbing one with what could be described as ‘gusto’ compared with the rest of the evening’s mood.

“Fortune cookies are the worst,” Matt said with relish, as he tore into the package. “I kind of love them.”

“Read it out,” John said, ripping the crinkle-wrap off his own cookie. “That’s the rules.”

“’An inch of time is an inch of gold’,” Matt read. “Yup,” he confirmed, tossing the tiny paper slip down onto the table and crunching avidly into the hard, brittle pastry. “The worst.”

“Huh,” John said leadingly, when he read his fortune. 

“What?” Matt turned toward him. It was gratifying to see the hint of interest in something, anything, lighting his eyes.

John looked back down at his fortune and read. “…You will meet an _indelible_ acquaintance.” 

“It does not say that!” Matt raised his chin and leaned in, trying to get a look at the fortune.

“Sure it does,” John flashed the fortune at him, too quickly for Matt to read, then he raised an eyebrow and crumpled the little strip deliberately in his fist. 

“There we go,” Matt said, as if his suspicions had been proven. 

John watched him take a sip of his brown bottle with a smile on his lips. This was progress. “You callin’ me a liar?” John pressed.

“I—yeah!” Matt confirmed, looking back at him and grinning over the lip of his drink.

John opened his fist to show the crushed fortune but when Matt reached for it he shut it just as fast. 

Matt’s grin got wider and he ducked his head. “Nice,” he muttered setting his bottle down, “Real mature.” 

Then Matt gave him exactly what he was looking for, and made a surprise swipe for John’s wrist.

Matt was fast, he actually managed to catch him, but John was the stronger and twisted easily out of his grasp. Matt rallied by launching himself across the couch, both quick hands flailing for purchase. John was ready for him this time, accounting for his speed and relying on torque to keep repeatedly freeing himself. 

What he didn’t account for, though, was brains. Most people he had fought, or sparred with, forgot John was left-handed and they let it take them by surprise. Not Matt. They ended up pressed backward over the arm of the couch, Matt straddling John’s lap with a knee planted firmly on either side of him and a tight, long-fingered grip around each of his wrists. 

John wasn’t out of tricks yet. Matt had hold of him, but he was using his grip on John for balance. Slowly, John started to spread his arms, so Matt would be forced to relinquish his hold, or fall. Matt held on, but his newfound grin faltered.

“That’s cheating!” he exclaimed, breathlessly. 

“Some would call it winning,” John argued. He spread his arms a little wider and Matt’s body levered down a little closer.

They were both breathing fast. Matt gave him a defiant look, and John widened his span a little more. Just a threat, but enough to bring Matt so close his hair was brushing John’s forehead. He barely even noticed the scent of Matt’s shampoo anymore, it was so familiar now. 

Matt broke eye contact first. He looked down at John’s chest, where he would land if he didn’t give in soon. And that’s when the switch flipped. 

It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like Matt’s gaze snagged on the neckline of John’s shirt again. Then it came back up to what might have been his mouth. 

John froze. Matt let go. 

Then he pushed himself up off of John and retreated to his corner of the couch.

“You give up too easy,” John said triumphantly. The taunt did nothing to revive the playful spark in Matt’s eye which seemed to have been snuffed out as quickly as it had ignited. 

“Yeah,” he agreed, with a brief and awkward looking smile down at his hands. “But some would call it winning, so.” Matt flashed the awkwardness posing as a smile in John’s direction for a second and then reached for the remote.

John leaned forward and caught his wrist before he could get to it.

“Hey,” he said, making sure to keep his tone gentle. “The Internet isn’t going anywhere.” He let go of Matt’s arm, which didn’t move, just stayed there, hovering over that crazy remote Matt had that looked like it was designed for shooting digital zombies and driving virtual racecars, not playing and pausing movies. John just hoped he never had to figure out how to use it. “You were finally starting to relax,” he went on. “Let’s just…hang out.”

Matt sat back. His lips thinned a little into a skeptical line. He looked anything but relaxed. 

“Hang out,” he repeated, uncertainly.

“Yeah,” John said, and then abandoned all pretense. “Look, Kennedy called me over here because she’s worried about you.”

Matt gave an impatient sigh. “She always does this. I—look I know it’s weird, and like, hermit-y or whatever, but I’m _work_ —”

“I know,” John interrupted, still keeping his voice as gentle as he could, “I know you’re ‘working’. But hey, I work too, and I don’t look like I haven’t eaten in a week, and there ain’t bags under my eyes big enough to carry my sister’s shoe collection.”

That got Matt’s attention. Although he didn’t look happy about it. He looked sharply up at John, exasperation written all over his face. 

“Matt,” John said, before he could start giving him hell, “she’s not the only one who’s worried.” 

Matt’s expression softened a touch, and his shoulders slumped as a little of the tension went out of them. 

“We haven’t even spoken in weeks. It…” John stopped short of saying ‘it’s not like you’. It felt strange to realize the truth was he didn’t really know. “I was starting to wonder if it was something I said.”

Matt sighed again. He rubbed both his hands over his face.

“My ex-girlfriend would say this is why I don’t have any friends,” he said, finally. “And probably why she’s an ex-girlfriend. Look, I’m sorry,” Matt said. He got slowly to his feet, like he was expecting John to do the same so they could call an end to the evening. John sat exactly where he was, for now. “I shouldn’t have…crawled in your lap like that. I’m not trying to push you, John, I’m just—”

It was the first time John could remember Matt using his first name.

“Push me,” he interrupted. He felt almost as surprised by it as Matt looked.

Matt stopped talking and looked down at his chest, the breadth of his biceps, like John had meant it physically. Although when he thought back to how much easier things had been when they were roughhousing, how much happier and relaxed Matt had looked, he thought it might not be a bad plan. 

“I—sorry, what?”

“Push me,” John repeated. “You got things to say to me, shit you wanna ask? Push me, say it. Ask.”

Matt stared at him helplessly for a moment. He didn’t say anything, but he sat back down and stopped acting like he was about to kick him out so he could disappear back into his room. Baby steps, John figured.

“I told ya, you give up too easy.” Matt still didn’t speak, but his eyebrows moved together like he was considering the words. “That night you came over, looking all sharp? …Gave up too easy then too.”

Matt’s eyebrows stopped bunching together like he was trying to use them to hold too many thoughts in his head. In fact, it looked as if his mind might have gone completely blank.

He looked at John for a second. And another. 

“Respecting the fact that somebody doesn’t date guys isn’t giving up. It’s sort of more of a non-starter,” he said finally. 

“Who made you the expert on who I’ve dated?”

Matt’s eyebrows shot straight up this time. 

“You’ve dated guys?” he said, disbelievingly. Almost like he might be about to laugh at him.

“Just the one, but yeah,” John said, and he almost wished Kennedy could be here to see the shock on Matt’s face. Who was all modern and open with their sexuality now, huh? “…And I wouldn’t call it dating exactly.”

“I—is this where I ‘push’ you?” 

John spread his hands silently in reply. 

“Fine, I’ll bite,” Matt said, leaning back into the couch, and if he didn’t look relaxed, at least he didn’t look checked completely out of life anymore, like he had when John had arrived. “Who is this mysterious not-date. Do tell, Detective.”

Now that it came to it, though, John wasn’t exactly sure how to start. In his zeal for drawing Matt out of his lifeless, ‘hermit-y’ shell, and his pride in not being the stodgy old fuddy-duddy he must have seemed earlier tonight, he had led them to a topic that he had frankly zero experience talking about. Because he had never told anybody. 

How did Matt always do this to him? It was happening again. Matt, just sitting quietly, waiting with those intelligent eyes on him, unblinking. Not pushing. Just open and ready. In case. 

In case John wanted him. Like he had been with everything else. 

John cleared his throat. 

“When you get out of the Academy, they pair you up with a mentor. Somebody older, more experienced. Y’know, to show you the ropes.” John waited, for Matt to make a snarky comment about stereotypes, or how he saw a dirty movie like this once, but he didn’t. He just waited. “He was this older guy, y’know, tough. A little dangerous. It was just locker room stuff, mostly. A bit of horseplay in the showers…maybe some fooling around in a couple of back alleys after a bust got our blood pumpin’.” John stopped. He looked at Matt. “I was young.”

“And so that’s what you think this is?” Matt said finally, when it was clear John was finished. He pointed a finger at himself. “Like…hero worship?”

Matt made it sound like a bad thing. John felt his brain groping around for some other way to put it. “You said the first time I saved your life was the first time…”

“Yeah but—” Matt cut him off with a little laugh that didn’t actually sound funny. He scooted himself a little closer on the couch, like what he had to say was important and he wanted to be sure John could hear. “Not because you’re, like, this big-swinging-dick, cowboy stereotype.” There it was, John thought, the ‘stereotype’. He prepared for the ‘gay porn trope’ and Village People jokes, but none came. 

“Not because you’re ‘dangerous’ – Okay so you’re totally all those things,” Matt said, with a dismissive wave. “But you don’t make me feel dangerous, coming over to your place that night wasn’t about catching some kind of thrill. When I’m with you… I feel safe.”

Oh. 

“It’s not something I feel that often anymore,” Matt said quietly, “Safe. Since the Fire Sale. You know?”

“Yeah.” John nodded. He had known, once. It felt like another lifetime ago; the years of counselling after Nakatomi. The countless therapy sessions and family support groups, and none of it had saved his second shot at his marriage, or his relationships with his kids. He could never get over it, the feeling that they weren’t safe, the need to always protect. Or to _over_ protect, as they had put it, in numerous arguments over the span of more years than John wanted to think about. 

He supposed he still hadn’t gotten over it. John had come here tonight with one goal – protect Matt. Sure, mainly from himself, but still. And now here was Matt, saying he liked having John around because he made him feel safe. 

Well, mission accomplished. For once. 

“Hey,” Matt was saying, when John came back from his thoughts. It had the sound of a question. 

“Huh?” Matt’s hand was on his knee. It was warm.

“Can I show you something?”

John could admit to a little trepidation as Matt led him across the apartment to his bedroom. Remembering Matt’s old place, it came as little surprise that the little room looked like a cross between a storage unit and video game graveyard. There was stuff, and boxes of stuff, everywhere. There were even large jugs of water and some canned goods stacked up in the corner as if Matt were preparing for the apocalypse. And having met Matt’s friend the Warlock and seen his ‘Command Centre’ first hand, John wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly the case. 

There was a little clear path of space on the carpet Matt could use to get to his desk and the bed next to it, however, and John was pleased to see Kennedy had made good on her promise to make sure it didn’t smell like a dumpster. An orange tabby cat was curled happily on the corner of the unmade bed. 

On the walls, Matt had hung up some frames. There were pictures of Matt’s family, one of them gathered around a younger Matt wearing a cap and gown at his highschool graduation. There was another of him even younger still, maybe ten or eleven, with his arm around another boy John didn’t recognize, both of them grinning and holding out what John could only assume was the first fish they had each ever caught. There was a shot of him and Kennedy smiling over drinks side by side in a booth at some bar. It was a little out of date but looked more or less like the pair as John knew them, and next to that was a photo of him with John himself. John looked at it in surprise before he realized these were the clippings Kennedy had mentioned. The frame was filled with a spread of two or three newspaper and magazine clippings collaged together.

There was one of them on the fateful day itself, neither of them looking at the camera, still streaked in blood and muck and looking shellshocked and exhausted. There was one of them tidy and freshly scrubbed in their hospital pyjamas, receiving their merit award certificates from Miguel Bowman and aiming exhausted morphine-enabled grins at the cameras despite the sling on John’s arm, and Matt leaning on his crutches. And there was one of John, taken in profile weeks later, giving his press statement.

“Oh,” Matt said, “you found that.” He was standing at the desk next to John, bent over a collection of computer junk John couldn’t put a name to with a gun to his head. “It’s not what I wanted to show you, although it’s kind of been my inspiration. I was going to show you this.” 

Matt held a hand out at the pile of mechanical miscellany. John tried not to look completely baffled. He noticed at second glance that it was all connected together with wires, and in some places, duct tape. 

“It’s what I’ve been working on,” he explained. “I call it HERO, Home Emergency Response Organizer. Watch.” Then he bent down and talked into a small microphone John hadn’t noticed before. “Hi Hero,” he addressed it. 

“Hello, Matthew,” a recording of Matt’s own voice said back. “What’s your emergency?”

“Voice recognition, for security,” Matt explained, as if all of this made perfect sense. “See, you try it. Just…” Matt gave a little laugh and John realized he must be looking old and confused as hell right now. “Just say hello or something.”

John leaned down next to the microphone. “Hello or something.”

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the recorded voice. “Please have an authorized family member introduce you.”

“It will keep saying that until your voice gets introduced by an authorized one,” Matt explained quickly. And you can integrate with your alarm system, see, so if you think there’s somebody in your house that shouldn’t be, you can even program it to sound the alarm.”

“Very cool,” John said, and he meant it. He had always known Matt was smart with this stuff but seeing it first hand was kind of interesting, even if he didn’t really get it.

“Hero, I’d like you to meet John,” Matt said, into the microphone. “Say hello or something again,” he prompted.

“Hello or something again,” John said. 

“Smartass,” Matt said, grinning. But the machine had started clicking and making whirring sounds. 

“Hello,” the recorded voice said again, “…John.”

“Nice,” John said, nodding. “Creepy.” 

“He is a little,” Matt agreed, laughing. It’s just a prototype, the voice obviously won’t be me if I ever get him ready for sale. Maybe a snooty English Butler like JARVIS. …I wonder if Jude Law’s available…” 

John had no idea what that meant, but Matt had hold of his elbow and was pulling him toward the little mic again. 

“See, Hero is like Siri for Emergency Preparedness. Tell him there’s a hurricane coming.”

“Hero,” John said stiffly, “there’s a hurricane.”

More clicking and whirring. “There are no hurricane warnings in your area,” Matt’s voice said. 

The real Matt beside him laughed. “Okay, that’s okay, he’s working properly at least. Sorry.” He leaned over to the far side of the desk where the type of computer John did recognize sat with its light-up keys glowing silently in the dim, windowless room. “Let’s just…make one,” he said, typing something rapidly in on the keyboard. 

He spared John and leaned over to talk to Hero himself this time. “Hero, help us,” he said.

“Hello Matthew,” Hero responded creepily again. “What’s your emergency?”

“Hurricane,” Matt said succinctly. It was followed by some whirring but no clicks this time.

“You have approximately four hours to prepare. Please show me your provisions.”

“This is my favourite part,” Matt said, excitedly. John was happy to see him moving and motivated. He wondered briefly if he was failing Kennedy disastrously by letting Matt back in here to tinker with his obsession again, but this whole thing was kind of too great for him to care enough to stop it just yet. “I don’t know if I’ll have a separate wireless scanner, or if you just pick up the unit and scan,” Matt rambled as he fiddled with the machine. “It’ll depend if he’s wall-mounted…” Matt pulled something out of the jumble of wires that looked like a grocery bar-code scanner and pointed it at the pile of apocalypse provisions in the corner. John noticed they were all stacked with their code stickers facing away from the wall.

Matt moved the scanner slowly over the pile, and then clicked a button. “Your provisions are insufficient,” Hero proclaimed. “You may need a first aid kit. I am searching for a list of places you can buy…first aid kits. In your area within…four. Hours.” Matt gestured grandly at the screen of his computer, which pulled up a Google Map dotted all over with red location icons showing drug stores and supermarkets. 

“You’re a genius,” John said flatly.

“No…” Matt said modestly. He looked like he was blushing, but he might have also just been flushed with excitement about being back in his element.

“No, nothin’.” John said. “You are a genius, Matt. This…I’m impressed.”

“Well it is what the IQ tests say,” Matt allowed, somewhat less modestly. “But this…I mean you get the credit.”

John looked at him, and started mentally checking for symptoms of fever or head injury. 

“The day we met you said something that…” Matt looked over at the clippings on the wall. “You said what we should be worried about was the people who were alone and scared in their houses. I had you, so I was okay. But a lot of people weren’t that day. I did my research and there were thirteen heart attack victims that didn’t make it because the system was shut down, just for a few hours. There were two elderly people that died of accidental falls because ambulances couldn’t get there on time, and there was even one lady that died in childbirth. That kid doesn’t have a mom now, because of Gabriel.” 

Matt looked at him and let that tidbit land.

“I can’t stop anything like that from happening again, nobody can. But since we started hanging out again I realized how important it is just to feel safe. I wanted to create something to make those people you talked about feel like they had a Hero of their own.”

John didn’t know what to say. That day, Matt had shown every indication of hating the system and everything about it. The ‘system’ that John was a part of. The ‘system’ that was made up of people. He had even said when he had first heard of a Fire Sale, he thought it might be ‘cool’. If he was honest, John had seen more of somebody like Gabriel in Matt that day, than somebody like him. The thought that Matt had taken a few words John had said just to get him moving so much to heart was…

“What?” Matt was asking him. He had lost his excited flush, he even looked like he might be a little nervous. “You’re…like, smiling.”

“It’s just funny,” John said, trying to put it into words. “You say that I make you feel safe. I used to think you were dangerous.”

Matt smiled a little, and looked down at his creepy robotic protector. “And now?”

John thought about how Matt could always get him to talk. Even when he didn’t think that he wanted to. He thought about Matt’s wide honest eyes on the couch earlier, the warmth of his hand on John’s knee. 

“…It’s a little of both,” John said honestly. 

“I know the feeling,” Matt said. He smiled, and he looked up from his mechanical creation and at John, with those eyes. Waiting. 

John was done waiting. He took a step forward and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. When that worked out well, he slid the touch upward to the side of his neck. His skin was as soft as it looked.

“You are a genius, Matt. And not just that, you’re—”

“ _Your_ genius?” Matt said simply. It wasn’t what John had meant, but it wasn’t something he didn’t mean, either. “Hey, you’re my hero, so it’s only fair.”

“Kowalski says she knows you like me because you like to stare at my neck,” John murmured, smoothing his thumb so gently over the ridge of Matt’s adam’s apple that the touch was barely a touch at all. He could feel goosebumps form under his fingers at the nape of Matt’s neck in response.

“It’s a nice neck,” Matt said, stepping right in and putting his fingertips to John’s collar bone. He felt his own skin draw tight and start to tingle in reply.

They were standing so that John’s back was to the bed. “Matt,” he said, hearing the way his voice had dropped to a low, bedroom register. “Push me.”

Matt looked up at him and smiled, and for a second John thought he was about to oblige. 

“Um…awkward,” Matt said instead of shoving him down on the bed and finally taking what they had both apparently been waiting weeks for, “but this will only just take one teeny tiny second, I promise.”

Matt slipped past him and went to the bed. 

“Kierkegaard, out!” he said, giving the orange tabby cat a nudge. The cat regarded him curiously, then turned the look on John. “Oh no, you perv. This is a private show,” he insisted, picking the cat up and dumping her unceremoniously out the door.

Then he turned around and without further warning, came barreling across the short distance to the bed and tackled John surprisingly effectively onto it. 

“Where were we?” Matt asked, grinning down at him.

John rolled them both firmly over, and gave Matt his answer.

*************** 

**Epilogue**

The launch party for HERO Inc. was a small and intimate affair, but it was still pretty good of Vinnie to let them have the place for the night.

The thing was, being small and intimate with a bunch of people Matt had only actually ever met on a computer screen meant he did a lot of shaking hands and was bought a lot of drinks, and was generally a hard guy to get alone. That was life as a CEO, John figured (even when you worked at a place where the CEO was also the Head of Design, and Sales, and also every other employee).

“You nervous?” Connie asked him. She had been asking him shit like that all night.

“Nah,” John said, taking another slow sip out of the whiskey she had talked him into. 

“Good,” she said, doing the same. “Because there’s your opportunity.”

John followed the direction of her nod. Matt was standing next to the appetizer table, chatting animatedly to Kennedy and her new girlfriend. He wasn’t alone, but it would definitely do. It was maybe even a little bit perfect. 

John drained his drink and grabbed his provisions.

“Go get ‘im, Tiger,” John heard Kowalski say, as he started to thread his way through the little clumps of computer nerds dressed to the nines in their cleanest t-shirts, and clustered around Best Buy and Home Depot sales reps in cheap suits. 

Matt’s back was turned when he got there, laughing at something one of the girls had said – or, most likely, at one of his own cheesy jokes. That was fine, because it gave John a chance to school his expression into something that looked like a relaxed, straight face, and to run his hand down the back of Matt’s silky steel gray button-down. 

“Hey, there, Mr. President-and-CEO,” John said in Matt’s ear.

“It’s Mr. Founder-and-CEO actually,” Matt said, smiling happily as he turned. “But Mr. President sounds better, actually. Maybe I’ll change it. Hi!” he said finally, leaning in for a quick kiss. 

“What’s in the box?” Matt asked curiously, once he leaned back. 

“Got you a little Launch Present,” John said, handing it over.

“I didn’t know that was a thing, I’ll have to throw corporate launches more often!”

“If it gets you out of your room,” Kennedy said, approvingly.

“And our apartment,” her girlfriend drawled, tossing back her long, dark hair and draping an arm lasciviously around Kennedy’s neck.

“But I’m such an appreciative audience, Lula,” Matt joked, ripping the paper off his gift and handing it to John. His face lit up when he got the box open.

“Fortune cookies,” he said warmly. “It’s a thing,” he explained briefly to the girls. “We have a thing.” Matt looked up at him and grinned. “What? …You have that face, that ‘wait for it’ face when I’m missing someth—” Matt looked back down into the box and saw the smaller box inside. 

Matt looked a little nervous as he reached in. John took the box of cookies so that Matt could open the little one. 

“Last time we had these, I think I got the wrong one,” John told him quietly. “Never shoulda let you have first pick. I believe this must be yours,” he said, as Matt got the box open to reveal a tiny, crumpled slip of paper. 

“You kept this…” Matt breathed, openly touched. Mission accomplished, again.

“Read it out, that’s the rules.”

“‘All your hard work is about to pay off,’” Matt read. His voice was just the slightest bit husky.

“Congratulations, Mr. Founder-and-CEO,” John said.

“Congratulations, Matt!” The girls said together, they gave a little round of applause and John realized Kowalski was standing behind him, clapping along with them. 

“It’s President…” Matt muttered, blinking quickly a few times before he looked up. “Thank you, John. Seriously.”

“You did great,” John said, smiling widely and wrapping a congratulatory arm around Matt. 

When John let him go, Matt was still blinking the touched sparkle out of his eyes. “Ugh,” he said, “I need a cookie.”

John pulled the box away before he could get at it. “You lost first pick, remember?” He picked out a cookie and handed it over. 

Matt unwrapped his cookie while accepting graciously as Connie gave him her congratulations. He stopped mid-thank you, and choked on a sudden laugh.

John ignored Kowalski’s knowing smile, and waited. 

“Read it out,” she told Matt. “You know the rules.”

“‘You will make an indelible acquaintance’. ‘Indelible’ is in bold,” Matt said, flipping the fortune over to show her and the girls. “I think this cookie may have been hacked.”

“Oh yeah?” John said all too innocently, “I think there’s something wrong with this one, too.” John gave it a shake, to demonstrate something was rattling around inside, and then held it out for Matt. 

Matt took it with an incredulous shake of his head. Inside the cookie was a shiny silver key.

“How did you…”

“Vinnie knows a guy,” John said. “They put engagement rings in ‘em and stuff. So whaddya say? My place. You wanna?”

“ _I do_ ,” said Matt, grinning and tipping his chin up for a kiss. “Looks like you got your wish, ladies.”

“Our own apartment!” Lula exclaimed, wrapping both arms around her girlfriend this time and initiating a kiss that lasted much longer than the one he and Matt had just shared.

“And we got ours too, huh kid?” Kowalski said to Matt, with a friendly nudge on the arm.

Matt grinned and gave a wolf whistle. “Get a little closer, ladies, don’t be too shy to let those hands maybe get involved…”

The girls broke apart and Kennedy gave Matt a well-deserved shove to the shoulder. He just kept grinning a ‘worth it’ grin in Kowalski’s direction. 

“Oh, hey,” Matt said, with a snap of his fingers. “I have something for you too. Don’t go _anywhere_ , I will be right back.”

“Congratulations on the new roomie,” Kowalski told John, as they watched Matt make his way over to the bar and call for Vinnie. “If he’s the President, that make you First Lady?”

“Somebody oughta be a lady around here,” John bantered happily back. 

“Not a chance,” Kowalski said. They both fell quiet as she spied Matt on the return approach.

“For you,” he said cordially, holding out Kowalski’s missing black umbrella.

She laughed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, honey. Really. You know there’s—”

And John thoroughly enjoyed the look on her face as he and Matt both joined her in rowdy unison: _“about twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct!!”_

~~~

. 


End file.
